Do Not Steal
Notes
Transcript
About 15 years ago Jennifer and I took our first senior pastorate job in a little town called Wintersville, Ohio. Wintersville, is not well known, some people know the town right next door Steubenville, but Wintersville was nestled in the Northeast corner of Ohio. It was about a ten minute drive to the northern tip of West Virginia and about a 45 minute drive to the outskirts of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. So, when you wanted to go to a big shopping trip or do something like that you had to make the trip to Pittsburgh. I’ll never forget, we had been there maybe a month, but I doubt it, and we had travelled to Pittsburgh for a fun evening and when we got back to the parsonage every door in the house was open and every light was on. Listen, when I say every door was open, this included both garage doors of the house were open, the front door was open, not the screen door, but it was all opened up. Now, I wasn’t as old then as I am now, but I knew we hadn’t left any of the doors open, let alone all of them, and so we were a little freaked out. Our first thought is always the worst, oh no, what did people steal. Looking back it probably would have been difficult for people to steal something in broad daylight, but no one had really gotten to know us to know our vehicle or who would have been coming in and out of the house. So I did what every good man does, and I walked into the house and assessed the damage, but there wasn’t a single thing that was lost. It was really surprising and perplexing all at the same time, because we couldn’t figure out what had happened, why would someone open the doors and not take anything, is there any possible way we opened both garage doors and left the door open, and it couldn’t have been a child, they were all little at the time. We never really figured out what happened but it kind of left its mark on us for a while.
Another time right before Christmas a couple of years before this when Josiah was just a wee little guy I had somehow gotten lucky and found a wii on marketplace cheap, but had forgotten that I had placed a big on ebay for one super cheap and somehow had won that one as well. So, here I am in a problem, I have two wiis and I have to figure out how to recoup the money for one. So, back then there was no facebook marketplace that was the days of craigslist, and I listed it on craigslist, and for some reason I went to drop it off to the guy. And all I can remember is how everyone told you you cant go into someone house when you meet them and I had emailed the guy and said Hey if you want to test it you can and I’ll just wait outside I don’t want to go in with you and he said thats fine. So I met the guy and he is standing outside the home waiting on me when I pull up and he says he will be back in just a second after he makes sure it is working. He walks toward the hosue and I return to my car. Well about ten minutes later I see people going into the house and I get suspicious. I call and he doesn’t come back out so I go to the door and ask for him. They tell me they have no idea who he is, he doesn’t live there, they offer to let me into the house to prove it. They said, we saw you sitting out there and wondered what you were doing. Apparently, the guy had gotten the wii and instead of walking into the house when I turned around he ran between the houses on the cul-de-sac and took off to a vehicle he probably had parked close by. Did you know even 16 or 17 years later I still think about how stupid that was and it still leaves a mark on me to this day. Yes we made a police report. No we never got it back.
And this morning that is what we are dealing with as we continue our series, Ten Words, and we look at our eighth word, You shall not steal. We have talked so much about how the first four words dealt with how we are supposed to live in relation with God, really how we can Honor God in our lives as we live in covenant with Him, and the next six are a representation of how we should live in relation with one another. The fifth word tells us to Honor our Mother and father; the sixth word really tells us we should honor life and the sanctity of it; the seventh word tells us we should honor our spouse as it is a representation of our covenant with God; and today we could look at this as honoring neighbor by honoring their possessions.
Quickly and to the point again we find this weeks word, just two words in the Hebrew again Lo Tignob
15 “You shall not steal.
Again as we have talked about how these words were not just supposed to be a marker for how we can live inside goal posts but how we are to live a better life for God we must not just look at the words of the law, but the heart behind what is being said here. It is important for us to remember again where these words are being spoken in the history of Israel. This moment when commandments are being given comes only fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt. They are standing here listening after generations of slavery and all of a sudden they are getting these rules on what they are to do with possessions, and this idea they shouldn’t steal is setting them up as free people. Let’s just work that through for a few minutes; in their history all of this living have never really been able to have their own possessions because they were slaves so someone could come and take what they had at any time. This word given here while we may think its a negative word telling us what not to do, to the people of the day it was also speaking to them allowing them to know for the first time in their recent history they would be allowed to own things; their things would be their own and no one else should take it from them. I think in the overall scheme of things we often miss this point, but I think it is so important in understanding the character of God and who he is and what he is saying to his people.
So, we shouldn’t steal because God has given us things, he has given us possessions and to take something from another person not only dishonors the gift, but the person in which we took it, and in the greatest of sense is dishonorable to God because we are taking what he meant for someone else into ourselves.
I think it is also important for us to stop for a moment and recognize the similarities between this word and the tenth word though shall not covet and what we can see is this is normally what Jesus does when we look at how he is telling us to live; he is making it harder and more intense. However, there is a slight difference here, this word deals with opportunity and not motive. What I mean by that is the verb used here indicates seizing an opportunity rather than planning ahead, and may be the biggest difference between the 8th and the 10th words of the decalogue.
When we talk about theft in todays society it takes many different faces it could easily be taking someone elses physical possession that isn’t ours, but it could also be stealing someone else’s term paper that isn’t ours and making it as our own. I had a friend in college who had a friend ask him about the paper he had written for a professor and asked if he could see it so he could get some ideas on what he should write about, and he shared it with him, well unbeknownst to him the guy just added his name to the paper and turned it and it took a little bit of time for this guy to get out of troubled and prove it wasn’t his intent for the guy to turn it in. This could be stealing someones intellectual property without them knowing and playing it off to be your own; and for so many in our society this can also look like someone taking your innocence at a very young age.
Remember, the whole idea of this word is to keep community from breaking down and showing us howe are truly supposed to live in relation with one another so we can have the lives God intended us to have. And when when people steal from us it breaks down that community, we tend to start to doubt the people around us, we doubt the situations we are in, and harbor fear and resentment from the people who have stolen from us. In the case of my buddy who had his term paper stolen, the guy plagiarizing his paper almost got him kicked out of school; For the guy who stole the wii from me, I steal think about it to this day; For any of you that have had your home burglarized you probably feel unsafe alone, or always wonder if it will happen again; and for those of you who had your innocence taken away from you as a child you have always worn a mark of trauma on your heart in some way, even if you were able through good counseling to overcome it. So what are we supposed to do, how are we supposed to live in light of this kind of theivery?
I want to read a story to you this morning, some of you may be familiar with about a man named Zaccheaus. You may know he was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, so he climbed up into a sycamore tree to see what he could see. However, what you may not understand really clearly is he was a tax collector and even deeper than that you may not understand why that was looked down upon so much in society. You see, Zacchaeus was a Jew, but he was also working for the Roman government. So the Jewish people hated the tax collectors because they were working for the enemy, and the romans didn’t really care for them because they were Jewish, and because they kind of saw these people as traitors as well. So, they were disliked all around.
1 He entered Jericho and was passing through.
2 And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.
3 And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature.
4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way.
5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”
6 So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.
7 And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
So, lets just get this straight, they aren’t exactly wrong here, Zacchaeus was stealing from them and keeping more for himself, and he was a sinner, lets forget we all are, that’s not they point they wanted to make, but let’s keep going.
8 And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”
9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
And I just want you to understand, Jesus is giving us this idea of restoration, in Exodus 22, we get the idea of repaying fourfold what we have stolen, and here Zacchaeus is acknowledging what he has done. He is saying, look Lord, I know what I did was wrong so what I have done is gone and repaid those who I have wronged. I think we can learn from this, and I don’t think we have to stick to the idea of this fourfold repayment, but we stick to the heart of what we are seeing here, Jesus is saying to Zacchaeus he has owned up to what he has done and he is trying to make amends for it; he has accepted his responsibility and doing what he can to try to fix the wrong he has done. This is the problem most of us have when we have stolen something is we don’t really take responsibility we play it off as Jesus would understand why we did it but here we see Zacchaeus saying I messed up, I need to fix it.
Not only that, I think the most important thing of this whole conversation is it shows us how we are supposed to act with people who have made amends for their actions that have wronged us or others; we are supposed to forgive them. Listen, I will say this again as I have said so many times over this series, forgiveness does not mean I have to get close and have a close knit relationship again; but it does mean letting go and giving your grievances over to God. It means no longer holding it over their head.
Church this morning as we are about to enter into a time of communion, the question I have for you is, is there someone you have stolen from you need to go and make amends with? Is there someone who has stolen from you, that you are holding anger against, because remember, whether they have apologized or not we need to offer them the forgiveness they often don’t deserve. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t deserve the forgiveness that Jesus gave me when he gave his life on the cross as a ransom for us all. So this morning before we enter into communion maybe you need to come before the altar and you need to lay it all down and give it all to him.
